VersaCork: Waterproof Recycled Cork Flooring For Any Room

Cork flooring is a wonderful, sustainable building material, but many types of cork floors are designed for dry living spaces. Luckily, VersaCork can give you the style and comfort of a cork floor in a bathroom, or even a shower.

Produced by Boulder, Colorado-based Sustainable Flooring Inc., VersaCork (and its sister product ShowerCork) comes from post-industrial wine corks. 1/4″ cork discs are bonded onto a backing sheet, which is then installed just like a mosaic tile sheet. VersaCork is available either sealed with urethane, or unfinished so it can be stained in any color. After the “tiles” are grouted they simply get finished with a sealant coat.
Whereas traditional cork floor planks can absorb moisture at their edges (resulting in swelling or warping), the installed CorkFloor is completely waterproof. This means you can enjoy the warm and resilient surface of a cork floor in wet areas like showers or pool surrounds as well as general living spaces. The manufacturer states that it’s even durable enough for heavy-use applications like warehouse floors or boat decks.

On a side note, although we’ve praised the eco-friendliness of cork before, the manufacturer cites out a cool fact form the World Wildlife Foundation about properly managed cork forests: “From a carbon sequestering standpoint, a cork tree which has its bark removed every 9 years will absorb 3-5 times as much CO2 than a similar tree that is left idle.” VersaCork’s eco-friendliness can help a building project earn points toward a LEED certification.